1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the medical field and, in particular, to medical equipment and, more especially, relates to a controlled-environment container for the preservation and the transporting of live organs to be transplanted.
2. Discussion of the Background
As is known, in the medical field a technique currently used today consists in grafting complete organs when all other treatments have proved to be ineffective in order to overcome pathological anomalies or functional disorders.
This technique makes use of a donor from whom an organ or group of organs is removed and a recipient to whom the organ or group of organs thus removed is grafted in order to substitute for a failing one which previously was ablated.
Nowadays this type of intervention is conventional for heart, liver and kidney transplants, even for combined heart-lung transplants.
The medical teams responsible for the removing and those responsible for the grafting, use protocols, of which there exist in general diverse schools together with variations. Of course, it is necessary that the removing and grafting protocols should be similar and be compatible.
It is not very common that the donor and the receiver are simultaneously close in time and geographically. This is why it is essential to preserve and most often to transport the organ between its removal and its reimplantation.
After removal, it is necessary to check the actual state of the organ and to ensure also that the organ is preserved under good conditions before its reimplantation, and it is essential also to ensure that, before proceeding to the latter, the state of histological and functional preservation is correct in order to ensure a reasonably high probability that the graft will take with the maximum chance of success.
The techniques for preserving an organ during the transporting phase are numerous, and also depend on the removal and reimplantation protocols. Thus in heart transplants it has been proposed first of all to stop the heart before removal by injection with a cold cardioplegia solution at approximately 4.degree. C. and then subsequently to preserve the graft cold by immersing it in a Collins solution and/or carrying out a hypothermal intracoronary continuous perfusion of a Fluosol solution, whilst seeing to it that the temperature of preservation is not close to 0.degree. C. in order to prevent deleterious effects for the myocardium which result in cryolesions.
The state which the organ is in at the moment of its reimplantation must also be checked. It is easily imagined that this state is not only a function of the initial state at the moment of the removal but also depends on the conditions of preservation and of transporting. It is therefore absolutely essential that the medical team responsible for the grafting be able to have at their disposal and understand the maximum amount of information pertaining to the organ, to the actual removal as well as the conditions in which the transporting was effected. This information, added to that obtained directly by examinations and analyses of the organ just before its reimplantation make it possible to determine whether the state in which the organ is received justifies the recipient being "prepared" for receiving the grafting of this organ. This information is, for example, that which results especially from histological studies and birefringence measurements on myocardial biopsies and on measurements of the intramyocardial pH with the help of a probe.
The transporting conditions are numerous and varied. Depending on the location, the external ambient temperatures may be considered, more or less, as being between approximately -20.degree. C. and +50.degree. C. The transporting means may involve ships, lorries, ambulances, cars, motorbikes, aeroplanes and helicopters which have their own regimes of shock and vibration with specific amplitudes and frequencies.
The complexity and the variety of these techniques for removal, transporting and implantation, as well as the successes of the grafts thus made, are greatly dependent on the suitability of the technique for preserving and transporting the organ.
It can be appreciated therefore that there is great importance and significance in being able to have a container which allows a removed organ to be preserved and transported, whilst being capable of easily adapting, at will, to the protocols effectively chosen by the medical teams, and which may also enable the latter to have at their disposal the maximum amount of information pertaining to the preservation and transporting conditions of the organ, between its removal and its grafting.
A container for the transporting of kidneys is described by the document U.S. Pat. No. 4,745,759. This document discloses a specialised container for the preservation of kidneys which, although giving relative satisfaction for these organs, is only suitable for this type of organ and does not lend itself at all for adaptation to the choices of operating and preservation protocols, nor, further, does it make it possible to know under what conditions the organ has been preserved and transported. This container has no scope for universality.
The object of the invention is to remedy for the most part the drawbacks of the prior art and to make it possible to preserve and transport living organs to be transplanted under chosen conditions, at will, according to the decisions of the medical teams, and the progress of which may be precisely known at any moment in order to facilitate diagnosing the state of the organ received just before its possible grafting.